In the wake of a brisk autumn morning, more than 50 preregistered cyclists from Champaign-Urbana came out under clear skies Saturday to bike in the first “EcoTour C-U,” an 18-mile tour of local environmentally “green” projects. The event was hosted by the partnership of Champaign Cycle and B. Lime: A Green Store.

Peter Davis, owner of Champaign Cycle, said he hoped the free event would help participants “understand how they can use their bikes as a means of transportation.”

“(Bikes) are an ideal campus and urban center transportation device,” Davis said. “You can ride them places that you can’t drive your car, they’re a lot easier to park, they’re more economically and environmentally friendly and they’re also often faster than going by car.”

In the past, Davis said he has hosted many long distance tours that ranged from 35 to 105 miles each, but he has recently begun hosting alternative tour formats, including two art gallery tours and three museum tours.

“By sponsoring in-town events like this that have a fun, educational aspect to them, it gives people the motivation to get out and do this,” Davis said.

The route began at B. Lime: A Green Store, which sells exclusively eco-friendly products that vary from automatic composting machines to a rain harvesting barrel which collects water from storm drains for gardening needs.

Wendi Lindsay, the store’s owner, has also organized past events such as “Composting 101” and “Cloth Diapers.” The latter encouraged parents to buy reusable diapers for their babies and toddlers.

“There are roughly eight million disposable diapers that end up in landfills every day,” Lindsay said.

The first stops on the tour were at two residential rain gardens, or impressions in the ground that hold all storm water to drain at one spot, said Stacy James, Prairie Rivers Network coordinator. The first of the stops is currently under construction by the network and was roughly 30 percent the size of the area drained, she added.

Also on the list of stops was the University’s entry to the 2009 Solar Decathlon, the Gable Home. Designed by Katharine Bayer, graduate student, the 560 square-foot building makes up a one bedroom certified Passive House that utilizes passive solar energy, extra insulation and air tightness that would consume the equivalent of a $70 energy bill, Bayer said.

While not every bike on the tour exceeded the price range of a used compact car, the variety of bikes included some electric-assisted powered ones too. One local resident trekked the route in a 1996 Swiss-built “Twike,” a three-wheeled electric-assisted vehicle made up of two recumbent bicycles, which resemble a paddle boat and a spaceship escape pod mashed into one.

Davis also had three of his store’s electric-assisted bikes available for test rides at the starting point of the tour.